Why ArciFab Lite

THE WHOLE MENU

Two options, and neither one fits.

The spreadsheet

It works. It has worked for years. It works because one person built it, understands it, and quietly repairs it every time a rate moves or a tab gets dragged.

The business is running its pricing on something that lives on one machine and in one head. Nobody wants to say that out loud.

The tool that isn’t MEP

Built for a different trade, sold into yours. The assemblies are close but not right. The units are close but not right. The workflow assumes a job you do not run.

So every estimate carries a tax: the time spent bending the tool toward the work instead of doing the work.

WHERE YOU ARE

You already know which list you are on.

You’re done with

a spreadsheet only one person understands

a tool built for somebody else’s trade

a highlighter afternoon

a number that implies a BOM

You’re ready for

labor and material on your rates

takeoff against the drawing

a real BOM off the PDF

a proposal that comes off that estimate

ON A REAL BID

What it looks like.

Flat sheet laid out on a cutting table in a fabrication shop

The sheet still has last year’s waste factor.

Rates get updated because somebody remembers to update them. Factors do not, because nothing prompts you and nothing breaks when they are stale. The estimate looks fine and prices out clean, carrying an allowance that stopped matching what the material actually does two price increases ago.

The assembly catalog and the drawing do not agree.

The assembly says a hanger every ten feet. The drawing shows what the engineer specified. Whoever is counting resolves the difference in their head and carries on, and they are usually right. Nobody can see which way it went, and the next person will resolve it the other way.

Bundled conduit runs sweeping along a wall

The RFQ goes out without a count the field can build from.

The vendor gets enough to quote against. The field gets a total. The list that would have told the crew what is actually coming was never written down anywhere, so the first person to find the gap is the one standing at the truck with a manifest that does not match the load.

ONE INSTANCE

Five things, one room.

Labor

Material

Takeoff

BOM

Proposal

Nothing gets re-keyed.

THE PART NOBODY SOLVED

The highlighter is still the takeoff.

Every piece of information needed to build a bill of material is already in the set. It has been sent to you, it is on the screen, and it is machine-readable.

And the way it becomes a BOM is still a person, a highlighter, and an afternoon. Then a second person checks it, because everybody knows what happens when nobody checks it.

That gap is the reason Lite exists. Not a better spreadsheet. The step nothing else takes.

WHAT CHANGES

The estimator stops being the system.

A BOM off the PDF

The takeoff runs against the drawing, and the bill of material comes out the other end.

No champion required

Rates and assemblies live in the system. It survives your best estimator taking a week off.

Built for this trade

Your assemblies, your units, configured to how your people already price.

Your name on it

A dedicated instance, white-labeled as yours. The proposal goes out under your name.

THE FIRST CALL

What we will not do.

No feature tour before we have seen how you price.

No price before we understand the estimate.

No second brand on the login screen.

The drawing is right there.
Make it a bill of material.